- The WESTMINSTER REVIEW was founded in 1824 by Jeremy Bentham and its first editor was John Browning. In 1851 it was taken over and edited by John Chapman, with George Eliot as assistant editor from 1851-1853. Through his disciples James Mill, John Stuart Mill, Ricardo, Sir Samuel Romilly, Henry Brougham, and John Browning, Bentham exerted a great and beneficial influence on the development of English society and its institutions throughout the nineteenth century. The Westminster Review published many "firsts" of some of Britain's greatest Radical and Liberal writers and the high quality of its contributors make this an important source for the deep study of free thought and economic ideals of the last century.